Christopher Le Breton on Kaitiakitanga, Guardianship of the Environment for Seven Generations

Interviewed by Tim LynchJuly 22, 2015
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Christopher Le Breton is uniquely placed to make a difference at the interface of environment and development, having been an environmental project officer in the European Commission in charge of projects in the former Soviet Union. He was also a European Union environmental adviser and capacity-builder on the ground in Serbia.  He has lived, worked, and travelled in 97 countries around the world, engaging at all levels, from Government to grassroots, from private sector to not for profit sector.

Christopher walked away from this lifestyle, sold his house in London, and set out to bike the world giving Awakening the Dreamer Symposiums as he went. After completing 75 educational workshops in 7 countries over years, including 50 of them cycling through Australia and Indonesia, Christopher Le Breton has settled in New Zealand.

He had been able to implement a number of projects in 10 countries over 7 years, inspiring people to create thriving, dynamic projects in their communities. These projects are boosting, for instance, local economies in Australia, saving indigenous wisdom in Indonesia & Ecuador, saving orangutans, and addressing climate change in Indonesia. On leaving Ecuador recently an indigenous elder asked Christopher to go back and change the dream of the modern world – that is to wake every one up!

Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, Christopher has set up Earth Partners Trust in partnership with tangata whenua, promoting the concept, understanding and implementation of Kaitiakitanga, guardianship and stewardship of the environment for the current and the next seven generations.

To that end, he leads special workshops, symposiums, for Aotearoa New Zealand helping people to see that an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilled society is an achievable dream for us to have here. The workshops demonstrate that a new future is possible based on kaitiakitanga and kanyini.  Kanyini is an Australian Aborigine concept, propounded by the late, Uncle Bob Randall of Uluru, a friend of Christophers. Christopher considers both kanyini and kaitiakitanga as the critical core of active guardianship.

Christopher is available to lead symposiums in every part of New Zealand. He then follows these with a few days leadership training for change agents who can facilitate new thinking and new ways of working together in their community, honouring the spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi.

“We have an opportunity to inspire the world to learn from our own unique Aotearoa experience here, drawing on the best of our own indigenous inheritance/paradigms as well as the best of what there is in the modern world.  Few countries in the world have the opportunity that we do to learn from and take the best of two different systems, to marry them together and forge something compelling, sustainable, just and fulfilling“.

The symposium gives people an opportunity to look at un-concealing some of the unexamined assumptions that underpin the modern consumer economy and modern world:  a world that gives very little rights to the natural world, a world built on consumption and material acquisition. This is a necessary first step to understand how We/Mankind got into the situation of trashing the planet (and each other).

Usually we humans delight in calling for concerted efforts to get into action quickly to change things, but if we rush into ""doing something"" without understanding how we got into the mess we are in', we risk repeating the same errors.

The symposium offers a fresh perspective on the causes of the environmental un-sustainability, social injustice, and high rates of cynicism, aimlessness, frustration and hopelessness around the planet. After getting present to this alternative perspective of how the world got to be in this state of affairs, we can begin to consider what might be possible for the future.

Participants get to see that we are all one, that everything is profoundly interconnected, something that chimes with both the spirit Maori philosophy and Aborigine philosophy.  Participants get a moment to look at what lights themselves up in their lives, what gives them joy and passion, and also to look at what their communities and the world needs. They can also consider what else their own community needs.   We can envision a world at peace with itself and other species with which we share the planet.

You can contact Christopher through his web site; 
www.earthpartnersfoundation.eu

This interview was sponsored by The Awareness Party – politics with principle. The New Political Party for the future of New Zealand.

www.theawarenessparty.com  

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Tim Lynch

Tim Lynch, is a New Zealander, who is fortunate in that he has whakapapa, or a bloodline that connects him to the Aotearoan Maori. He has been involved as an activist for over 40 years - within the ecological, educational, holistic, metaphysical, spiritual & nuclear free movements. He sees the urgency of the full spectrum challenges that are coming to meet us, and is putting his whole life into being an advocate for todays and tomorrows children. 'To Mobilise Consciousness.'

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